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Without Jon Stewart, Who Will Fill the Late-Night Throne?

There are plenty of personalities in the Daily Show host’s orbit—Amy Schumer, Key and Peele, Lena Dunham—but can any of them truly replace Comedy Central’s golden boy?

By

John Anderson

Aug. 6, 2015 5:17 p.m. ET

Jon Stewart has left the building, a.k.a. Comedy Central’s World News Headquarters in New York. A nation mourns. Bedtime will never be the same. Politicians won’t have America’s pre-eminent faux pundit to kick them around anymore. And TV comedy? In Mr. Stewart’s wake lies tumult and unease.

There’s no question it was time for him to go. He knew it. “The Daily Show” was marked in recent months by an increasing reliance on easy jokes, easier vulgarity, and the isn’t-it-adorable inability of the guy with the bleeper to...